roman on transitions

via tweet [https://x.com/robintransition/status/1824728115580387560]:

Excellent article by @romankrznaric on what we can learn from history about what makes large scale social transitions possible: [https://aeon.co/essays/what-turns-a-crisis-into-a-moment-for-substantive-change]

notes/quotes from jun 2024 article:

Roman Krznaric is a social philosopher and author of History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the Past for the Future of Humanity (forthcoming, July 2024). He is senior research fellow at the Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing at the University of Oxford and founder of the world’s first Empathy Museum. His internationally bestselling books have been published in more than 25 languages.

The disruption nexus – Moments of crisis, such as our own, are great opportunities for historic change, but only under highly specific conditions

Might it be possible to leverage the instability that appears to threaten us?

*The problem is that so often crises fail to bring about fundamental system change, whether it is the 2008 financial crash or the wildfires and floods of the ongoing climate emergency. So in this essay, based on my latest book History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the Past for the Future of Humanity (2024), I want to explore the **conditions under which governments respond effectively to crises and undertake rapid and radical policy change. What would it take, for instance, for politicians to stop dithering and take the ***urgent action required to tackle global heating?

*this because **this.. can’t change if don’t let go of all the cancerous distractions, aka: any form of m\a\p, ie: policy change et al

***focus on global heating is also a dithering ness..

we need to (and now have the means) to go deeper..

we need a problem deep enough to resonate w/8b today.. via a mechanism simple enough to be accessible/usable to 8b today.. in an ecosystem open enough to set/keep 8b legit free

ie: org around a problem deep enough (aka: org around legit needs) to resonate w/8b today.. via a mechanism simple enough (aka: tech as it could be) to be accessible/usable to 8b today.. and an ecosystem open enough (aka: sans any form of m\a\p) to set/keep 8b legit free

I thought that, if there were just a sufficient number of climate disasters in a short space of time –.. we might wake up to the crisis. But in the intervening years I’ve come to realise I was mistaken: there are simply too many reasons for governments not to act, from the lobbying power of the fossil fuel industry to the pathological fear of abandoning the goal of everlasting GDP growth.

This sent me on a quest to search history for broad patterns of how crises bring about substantive change. What did I discover? That agile and transformative crisis responses have usually occurred in four contexts: war, disaster, revolution and disruption. Before delving into these – and offering a model of change I call the disruption nexus – it is important to clarify the meaning of ‘crisis’ itself.

actually nothing transformative to date..all just surface tweaks

Let’s get one thing straight from the outset: John F Kennedy was wrong when he said that the Chinese word for ‘crisis’ (wēijī, 危机) is composed of two characters meaning ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity’. The second character, jī (机), is actually closer to meaning ‘change point’ or ‘critical juncture’. This makes it similar to the English word ‘crisis’, which comes from the ancient Greek krisis, whose verb form, krino, meant to ‘choose’ or ‘decide’ at a critical moment. In the legal sphere, for example, a krisis was a crucial decision point when someone might be judged guilty or innocent.

Malcolm Gladwell has popularised the idea of a ‘tipping point’ – a similar moment of rapid transformation or contagion in which a system undergoes large-scale change. In everyday language, we use the term ‘crisis’ to describe an instance of intense difficulty or danger in which there is an imperative to act, whether it is a crisis in a marriage or the planetary ecological crisis.

Overall, we can think of a crisis as an emergency situation requiring a bold decision to go in one direction rather than another. *So what wisdom does history offer for helping us to understand what it takes for governments to act boldly – and effectively – in response to a crisis?

*that we’ve not yet changed.. still same song.. we’ve not yet let go enough to see/be the unconditional ness of left to own devices ness.. the dance

These three contexts – war, disaster and revolution – help explain the overwhelming failure of governments to take sufficient action on a crisis such as climate change.

Fortunately, there is a fourth crisis context that can jumpstart radical policy change: disruption.

By ‘disruption’ I am referring to a moment of system instability that provides opportunities for rapid transformation, which is created by a combination or nexus of three interlinked factors: some kind of crisis (though typically not as extreme as a war, revolution or cataclysmic disaster), which combines with disruptive social movements and visionary ideas. These three elements are brought together in a model I have developed called the Disruption Nexus (see graphic)

virus noticings.. to (virus) leap.. et al

historical evidence suggests that a crisis is most likely to create substantive change if two other factors are simultaneously present: movements and ideas.

nothing in history legit/substantive change.. so no ie’s to date

Social movements play a fundamental role in processes of historical change. Typically, they do this through amplifying crises that may be quietly simmering under the surface or that are ignored by dominant actors in society. As Naomi Klein writes in her book This Changes Everything (2014):

this changes everything.. but again.. nothing legit changing to date

Multiple historical examples, which I have explored in detail in my book History for Tomorrow (and where you can find a full list of references), bear out this close relationship between disruptive movements and crisis.

In all the above cases, however, a third element alongside movements and crisis was required to bring about change: the presence of visionary ideas. In Capitalism and Freedom (1962), the economist Milton Friedman wrote that, while a crisis is an opportunity for change, ‘when that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around’. From a different perspective, Hannah Arendt argued that a crisis was a fruitful moment for questioning orthodoxies and established ideas as it brought about ‘the ruin of our categories of thought and standards of judgement’, such that ‘traditional verities seem no longer to apply’. Dominant old ideas are in a state of flux and uncertainty, and fresh ones are potentially ready to take their place. In these three historical examples, disruptive ideas around racial equality, women’s rights and democratic freedoms were vital inspiration for the success of transformational movements.

radical needs to be much more radical.. healing (roots of) et al

*Occasionally, crisis responses can come into conflict with one another, making it difficult to take effective action:..t in 2018, when the French government attempted to increase carbon taxes on fuel to reduce CO₂ emissions, it was met with the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) movement, which argued that the taxes were unjust given the cost-of-living crisis that had been pushing up energy and food prices.

*rather.. always.. until we let go enough to see/try the unconditional ness of left to own devices ness.. if we don’t.. we’ll just keep up with all the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world

This is not a time for lukewarm reform or ‘proportionate responses’. ‘The crucial problems of our time no longer can be left to simmer on the low flame of gradualism,’ wrote the historian Howard Zinn in 1966. If we are to bend rather than break over the coming decades, we will need rebellious movements and system-changing ideas to coalesce with the environmental crisis into a Great Disruption that redirects humanity towards an ecological civilisation.

ie of still lukewarm et al..

The challenge we face as a civilisation is to draw on history for tomorrow, and turn radical hope into action.

rather.. challenge is to let go of history ness.. of any form of m\a\p

how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us.. ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition

there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it

ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)

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